AI will do 1 dozen cupcakes for people because its easy for me to whip up a half a batch of cake. I have all my recipes calculated out for 1/2, 1, and 2 batches. Plus with the giant swirl on top, it takes a full batch of wilton recipe of icing for one dozen. But that's just me!

AYour minimum order will depend largely on your target market. If you are focusing on wedding cakes and have relatively affluent customers you may set a minimum in the $100-200 range. The bakery I founded focused on midmarket event cakes, so our minimum was an 8" round (starting at $44) or a dozen cupcakes per flavor (starting at $30). If a customer wanted a 6" round that was fine, but the price was the same as an 8" round. For the cupcakes we would sometimes make exceptions on the 12 per flavor minimum depending on workflow and our limited frozen inventory.

I will echo the thought of using a dollar amount as your minimum. That's what it really comes down to doesn't it? How much is your time worth? Ours is $75 for special orders. We have an open retail shop and of course there is no minimum order for things we have in production.